Autumn/winter horror preview 2013: In Fear, VHS2 and Carrie

A Nightmare on Elm Street and Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones also among upcoming horror highlights

The latter end of the year feels like an ideal time for a horror movie round-up: hallowe’en is just round the corner, and the rapidly lengthening nights thereafter provide many more unlit hours in which to wet yourself at the sound of a creaky door. That said, it is a little disheartening that, of the eight films scheduled to hit cinemas between now and the New Year (plus an extra release just after the bells, because we cheated), only one has fresh blood in it: the rest are reissues, remakes or additions to pre-existing franchises.

Not that this is all bad news, of course – when a film gets reissued it tends to be because the quality level is high enough for it to be given another look, especially when as venerable an institution as the BFI is distributing it. Based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, 1961 ghost story The Innocents (Fri 13 Dec) is part of the BFI’s Gothic strand, and stars Deborah Kerr as a governess attempting to save her young charges from the attentions of malevolent spirits. Wes Craven’s sleepy-time slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street (Thu 31 Oct, natch) is similarly worth a rewatch – while its memory may be slightly tarnished by a chain of ever diminishing effects-centric sequels, the original has some starkly cinematic scares at its heart, not least the image of Freddie leering through a bedroom ceiling. Both 1922 silent horror Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (Fri 25 Oct) and Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake, Nosferatu the Vampyre (Fri 1 Nov), also rise from the dead this autumn, perhaps arriving to remind the Twilight/Vampire Dairies crowd about the real power of Dracula.

Which brings us to the sole example of originality in these darkened months: In Fear (Fri 15 Nov), a no-budget horror that follows two young festival-goers who become lost among the narrow, winding roads of the British countryside. The trailer has done a very decent job of putting the frights up us, with a claustrophic in-car setting and a malevolent, shadowy force that could be anything from evil demons to disgruntled groundskeepers.

Schreck is a truly terrifying figure as Bram Stoker's famous vampire, looking more like a skinned bat than a human being. A wonderfully visual movie, with twisted shadows and sexual undercurrents placing it well above the Kinski/Herzog remake.

Simply put, one of the finest ghost stories ever committed to film. A shocking psychosexual/supernatural chiller adapted from Henry James's classic novel, The Turn of the Screw. Exceptionally ambiguous, it's unlikely to provide an obvious conclusion save that you'll want to see it again.

Perhaps the quintessential teenage slasher flick, A Nightmare on Elm Street obliterates the distinction between fantasy and reality. Nancy (Langenkamp) and her friends Glen (Depp), Tina (Amanda Wyss) and Rod (Nick Corri), discover they’re all being stalked in their dreams by the grotesque psychopath Freddie Krueger…

Tom (De Caestecker) and Lucy (Englert) are a new couple driving to a festival in Ireland, but they get lost – and then things start to happen. Director Lovering didn't tell his stars what would happen next, so their fear and uncertainty is real, and despite the story's inevitable turn towards obviousness it's an…

A young family moves into an historic home in Georgia, only to learn they are not the house's only inhabitants. Soon they find themselves in the presence of a secret rising from underground and threatening to bring down anyone in its path.